Archived in favor of Kernel.dbg

IceCream

Section

IceCream is a port of the python package of the same name.

Never use IO.inspect() again

Use IceCream to inspect any Elixir term with an automatically generated label.

Installation

The package can be installed by adding ice_cream to your list of dependencies in mix.exs . It should only be added for the dev and test environments.

def deps do
  [
    {:ice_cream, "~> 0.0.5", only: [:dev, :test]}
  ]
end

The docs can be found at https://hexdocs.pm/ice_cream.

Usage

Use IceCream in place of IO.inspect/2 . So write ic(value) instead of IO.inspect(some_value, label: "some_value")

It can also be used inside of pipelines. You can write:

Mix.install([{:ice_cream, path: "./"}])

:ok

defmodule SomeModule do
  import IceCream

  defp fabricate(data), do: data
  defp cleanup(data), do: data

  def some_fun(data) do
    data
    |> ic()
    |> fabricate()
    |> ic()
    |> cleanup()
    |> ic()
  end
end

SomeModule.some_fun("<data>")

ic| data: "<data>"
ic| fabricate(data): "<data>"
ic| cleanup(fabricate(data)): "<data>"

"<data>"

Instead of:

defmodule SomeModule do
  defp fabricate(data), do: data
  defp cleanup(data), do: data

  def some_fun(data) do
    data
    |> IO.inspect(label: "data")
    |> fabricate()
    |> IO.inspect(label: "fabricate")
    |> cleanup()
    |> IO.inspect(label: "cleanup")
  end
end

SomeModule.some_fun("<data>")

data: "<data>"
fabricate: "<data>"
cleanup: "<data>"

"<data>"

If in a function, you can pass :location and :function as options

defmodule SomeModule do
  import IceCream

  def some_fun(data) do
    ic(data, function: true, location: true)
  end
end

SomeModule.some_fun("<data>")

ic| README.livemd#cell:5 in SomeModule.some_fun/1 data: "<data>"

"<data>"

It also works if you pass in a function call

import IceCream
ic(:math.pow(2, 3))

ic| :math.pow(2, 3): 8.0

8.0

Configuration

Default options are configurable.

In addition to location and function , any of the Inspect options can be set, such as :limit

# config/dev.exs
config :ice_cream,
  location: true,
  function: true,
  limit: :infinity